Projects

The Texas Digital Library (TDL) staff focuses efforts upon a few projects at a time. Current TDL development projects are listed below. For a list of existing TDL services, please visit the TDL Services page.

Digital Preservation

DuraCloud™ (a service of DuraSpace) provides members of the Texas Digital Library with a cost-effective and easy-to-use solution for digital preservation. DuraCloud™ is an open source technology that facilitates storage of digital content within cloud-based storage providers.

Additionally, the TDL is a charter member of the Digital Preservation Network (DPN) project, a nationwide effort among academic institutions to develop a geographically distributed, format independent preservation infrastructure.

Data Management

The Texas Digital Library is an access point for its members to a number of data management resources, including the Texas Advanced Computing Center (a strategic partner), DuraCloud, and its hosted DSpace repositories. The TDL is currently developing pilot projects with member institutions to create a service model for assisting with multiple aspects of the data lifecycle.

The Texas Research Data Repository is a platform for publishing and archiving datasets (and other data products) created by faculty, staff, and students at Texas higher education institutions. The repository is built in an open-source application called Dataverse, developed and used by Harvard University.

Electronic Theses and Dissertation Management

With Vireo, students submit their digital theses and dissertations via a simple online interface, while graduate offices can manage the ETD approval process behind the scenes. Institutions can also use Vireo to publish the ETDs in their TDL institutional repository and the TDL statewide ETD repository, where they are readily available to other researchers.

The TDL continues to support and develop Vireo under the guidance of the Vireo Users Group.

Digital Public Library of America Aggregation Service

The Texas Digital Library, through its home institution the University of Texas at Austin, is excited to be the recipient of a 2016 Library Cooperation Grant from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission for a project to develop a statewide aggregation service for Texas digital collections.

The TDL and its grant partners, the University of North Texas (UNT) and the Houston Public Library, will use the grant funding to plan for and prototype a metadata aggregation service to showcase the digital collections of Texas and ensure their discoverability in the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).